Terry Mack/Hollywood.com
There have been more rumors about Star Wars Episode VII than Jabba the Hutt has rolls of fat. But the fact is we still know next to nothing about J.J. Abrams' film. So to scratch our itch to see something — anything! — about the new movie we asked four of the most prominent Star Wars fans in all of Star Wars fandom to share how they'd like to see Episode VII open: James Floyd (@jamesjawa) of ClubJade.Net (@clubjade); Eric Geller (@ericgeller) of TheForce.Net (@TheForceNet) and Hollywood.com's Get Thee to the Geek Google Hangout series; William Devereux (@masterdevwi), Stephen Rice, &amp; Tom Christopher of the We Talk Clones podcast (@WeTalkClones); and Tricia Barr (@fangirlcantina) of FanGirlBlog.com. We then got illustrator Terry Mack to render these suggested openings as four storyboard panels. Click on each of the photos to get a close-up, hi-res look at each of the images and check out what the fans had to say!
JAMES FLOYD Writer, ClubJade.Net &amp; BigShinyRobot.com
After the scrolling text fades into the distance of the inky starfield, the camera pans down across the star-filled blackness of space to reveal an arc covering the bottom of the screen, a view of the top part of a large yellowish planet, shown in the day, lit from an offscreen sun.
The world has no pronounced surface features, though some patches are slightly darker than others, as if there was weather over the world. Other parts seem to shine, but overall, it's not quite in focus.
We hear a familiar cheerful beep-whistle, and the camera pulls back to reveal that the 'planet' is the back of Threepio's head as the droid floats in space. He slowly rotates around to face the camera, and as the camera continues to zoom out, Artoo and some debris also appear floating in space beside him. Both droids are intact, but are covered in patches of grime, dust and soot, explaining the 'weather' patterns on Threepio's less-than-shiny body.
Threepio, not liking weightlessness: "No, Artoo, THIS was not a good idea."
ERIC GELLERCo-host of The ForceCast, Social Media Director for TheForce.Net
Terry Mack/Hollywood.com
We see the massive reconstructed chamber of the Galactic Senate on Coruscant. It is filled mostly with senators and their aides, but Luke Skywalker sits in one of the Senate's floating pods with several Jedi Knights from his academy.
A Senate official calls for silence in the room and announces the arrival of the Supreme Chancellor. Luke eyes the center of the chamber, where the Chancellor's platform will rise into position, looking anxious.
We cut to a lavishly decorated hallway under the Senate chamber and see a set of legs from the knees down as someone strides briskly across the carpeted floor. This person is followed by two armored guards. We see the trio from the back as they reach the end of the hallway and an open doorway that leads onto a platform.
The guards remain in the hallway as the third person (whose face we still have not seen) strides through the doorway and onto the platform. We then cut to a close-up of an electronic sign on the wall next to the doorway that reads "SENATE IN SESSION." As the platform begins to rise into the Senate chamber above, the sign illuminates.
We then see an overhead shot of the Supreme Chancellor's platform as it rises into place, with Leia Organa standing on it, looking determined and in control.
The scene ends with a medium shot of Supreme Chancellor Leia Organa standing on the raised platform in the center of the Senate chamber. She says, "Members of the Senate, I come before you to discuss a grave matter that threatens the stability of our fledgling new Republic."
WILLIAM DEVEREUX, STEPHEN RICE, &amp; TOM CHRISTOPHERHosts, We Talk Clones
Terry Mack/Hollywood.com
Panel 1: Binary suns rise over a jungle planet (Ossus). A lone Jedi boot enters the panel.
Panel 2: Three-quarter shot over the left shoulder of Ben Skywalker (Luke’s son) looking at the sunrise.
Panel 3: The camera zooms out and Luke Skywalker enters screen right. He places his hand on Ben’s shoulder.
Panel 4: Cut to a shot looking at Luke and Ben, with the morning sunrise shining on their faces. It’s the dawn of a new era. A Jedi Academy is visible in the background, with dozens of Jedi apprentices and younglings training in the courtyard (practicing with lightsabers, using the Force to lift objects, etc.) just out of earshot.
This scene is the passing of the torch – literally for Luke and Ben and symbolically for the viewers. It echoes the famous Binary Sunset scene in A New Hope while providing a launching-off point for the new trilogy, complete with a rebuilt and thriving Jedi Order.
TRICIA BARRAdministrator, FanGirlBlog.com
Terry Mack/Hollywood.com
1. Han and Chewie in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. An overhead panel sprays out sparks while laser fire rips outside the front cockpit viewport. Han shouts, “Put your oxygen mask on, you big furball!” Chewie howls a protest. Han responds, “This old girl still has a few tricks left in her.”
2. A newer-model X-wing fighter swoops across the panel, firing on and blowing up the enemy starfighter tailing the Falcon. “Millennium Falcon, this trade lane is no longer safe. We'll escort you from here.”
3. The Falcon now parked in a hangar next to several of the X-wings. Han and Chewie walking away from the ship. Han says, “We need to find that hotshot who saved our tails and say thanks.” Chewie, arm raised, points across the hangar and growls something.
4. A female X-wing pilot hops down the ladder from the starfighter's cockpit, with Han and Chewie waiting for her at bottom. She pulls off her helmet and says, “All in a day’s work, Dad.”
More: 20 ‘Star Wars’ Origin Stories We’d Like to See With the Director for the Job ‘Star Wars Empire and Rebellion: Razor’s Edge’: Martha Wells on Writing for Princess Leia ‘Star Trek’ Has Lost Touch With Its Fans and Roberto Orci’s Rant Proves It
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The Season 6 premiere of Mad Men starts with a nasty trick. The episode begins through the perspective of a man lying on the ground, looking up at the ceiling while someone beats on his chest. In the background you hear Megan, Don Draper's wife, screaming. We're so used to seeing this world through Don's perspective we think, "Oh, Don Draper had a heart attack." Immediately it flashes back to him and Megan on the beach in Hawaii and you think, "Oh, we're going to find out how Don ended up having a heart attack." But later in the episode we learn, well, it wasn't Don at all, it was his doorman, who he, Megan, and their cardiologist neighbor watched have the cardiac arrest. What a dirty, stinking trick.
It feels like a bait and switch: we're supposed to think that Don is in danger of dying when he's not in danger at all. But it isn't a trick. It is Don's perspective. In fact the whole episode, like so many in Mad Men history, is staring toward death — with Don gazing in that direction not only because of the ill doorman but also because he is, once again, searching for identity.
Last season we saw Don struggling against his natural impulses. After marrying Megan and chasing his happiness, he came clean with her about who he is and his dark past. He was trying to integrate Dick Whitman and Don Draper and become one fully-formed healthy individual. By the end of the season, when he walks away from Megan and was eyeing that other woman in a bar, he had clearly failed. This season seems like it is going to be about his relapse, about the cost of his failure or, even worse, his sinking into irrelevance.
This episode, however, was all about artifacts. We see each of the four major characters we follow in the premiere – Don, Roger, Betty, and Peggy – each dealing with their identity, who they are and what the world thinks of them, and what objects from other people, dead or alive, have left them.
Like Greg Brady with the bad luck Tiki god, Don Draper finds his artifact in Hawaii. The first sequence of the show is very odd, showing Don and Megan in paradise and he's enjoying himself, but totally silent, conspicuously so. It's like he can't speak when he isn't being his authentic self, when he's playing the role he thinks he's supposed to. This is the same Don Draper who left his daughter's birthday party to go sit and drink alone in his car.
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The first time he speaks is to tell the soldier at the bar that he was in Korea, and to speak honestly about himself. When the drunk grunt asks Don to walk his soon-to-be wife down the aisle at his wedding, Don says, "You don't know me. One day you'll regret it." But the soldier says that one day he will be just like Don, a "veteran who can't sleep and talks to strangers." Though Don didn't start the conversation, what is his job other than "talking to strangers." Don puts aside his existential declaration that no one knows him (there is a lot of everyone not knowing anyone in this episode) and officiates his wedding, another moment of what seems like real joy, a moment of true love, even though Don rails later that the word is being overused and spent of its meaning.
Later, when he's back in his Manhattan apartment, when the slide of the ceremony comes up he can't talk about it to everyone else in the room. He is once again back to being inauthentic. (And, of course, notice the difference between Don's presentation with the carousel in this episode and his presentation with the carousel in Season 1.) Originally he was powerful and persuasive and using his own experience to win over the clients. Now he's entirely silent and no one wants to buy his experience.
Don's artifact, of course, is PFC Dinkins' lighter, which he and Don mistakenly switched at the bar. This time he has taken on another soldier's identity by accident, unlike the first time when Dick Whitman stole Don Draper's identity on purpose to achieve the American dream he always thought he was promised. Don thinks about taking on the soldier's identity, a soldier who is violent, impetuous, and stupid, all things that Don is not. He throws the lighter away, rejecting this new identity, but Megan brings it back to him. She proves that Don can't be his true self with her, she wants him to maintain an alter ego, whether it's Don Draper or this new PFC Dinkins, a man who gets sloppy drunk and asks inappropriate questions of strangers. Megan doesn't want the real thing, she wants a fake. Don eventually gives the lighter to his secretary and says to send it back, without a note. He wants to distance himself as far from this man as he can, no matter the joy he might have brought him on the beach. For Don it's more important to be honest and grow into himself again than take someone else's identity.
Don is also struggling with the inscription on the lighter. "In life we often have to do things that aren't our bag." Don's initial life with Betty were all things that weren't his bag – having the wife and kids and settling down in the suburbs. He rejected that motto to find happiness with Megan in the city and that wasn't his bag either. Don seems to have internalized this motto, but rails against it, selfishingly doing the things that are right for him even if they harm other people.
It seems like things at work aren't Don's bag these days anyway. He hates that the photographers are there to take everyone's pictures and they rearranged his office. He hates that he has to, once again, put on a facade for the public. The photographer tells Don to just be himself, but he can't. He no longer has any idea what his self is. He stands in his rearranged office thinking back on the waves of Hawaii as the snow falls, and you can't help but think of that falling man in the opening.
Later when presenting to the clients he gives them a presentation about a man who goes to Hawaii and is transformed, he just disappears into paradise (which seems to be Don's new fantasy about how to gain happiness). The client ask Don where the man went. "He jumped off," Don replies, once again recalling that falling man from the opening credits. Everyone thinks the guy killed himself, something Don didn't even realize he was telegraphing, something he might not have even considered as an option, until now. Is Don destined to be the one who falls off the top of the building, like people have always thought he is?
Things at the office aren't going well. Not only is there the strange interloper Bob Benson (who seems to be serving some dark force with a smile on his face), but Don no longer holds his sway with the clients. When they don't like his presentation, he gets forceful, explaining himself frantically, using his old penchant for getting aggressive to get results. But this time it doesn't work. He caves and tries to give them what they want; anything to prove he still has it, he's still a genius. Even that doesn't work. He has failed, and not only has he failed with his vision, he even failed with a compromised version of it. Don is struggling with everything, not only his sense of self, but his creative vision.
Don Draper, being Don Draper, is also having trouble at home. How do we know? Well, he doesn't care much about Megan or what she does or what she has to say. She's off having authentic experiences (working as an actress, going hunting for weed in Hawaii) while he's moping around with his white people problems wondering about what is going to happen to himself after he dies. Boo-hoo.
He's also sleeping with his neighbor's wife. We first meet Dr. Rosen in Don's elevator and it appears like they have a loose friendship. There's something about Rosen's skill as a doctor that intrigues Don, that he has somehow mastered death. It's like he has a real gift, a real profession, not just serving corporate shills by captivating the public's desires. Of course Rosen wants to be Don, a good-looking, confident man who can get anyone to do what he wants using the power of his persuasion. They both think the other has it all. Don offers the man a camera and, more importantly, his friendship, but the shock is that Don is sleeping with his wife all along.
Like always, Don's dalliances aren't about sex, they're about escape. They're about bucking against the norm and hoping that the feeling he creates through sex will somehow allieviate his anxiety about life. (Rosen even says, "People will do anything to alleviate their anxiety.") Yes, Don isn't sleeping with Rosen's wife because she's attractive (which she is) or he's in love with her, she has been reducted to an object of her own, another artifact. He's sleeping with her so that he can try to steal some of Rosen's magic and possibly inject it into his own life. He's fighting against being himself by trying consume another man's life yet again.
It's not working. He tells his new playmate, "I don't want to do this anymore," but he doesn't mean sleep with her, he doesn't even mean cheat on his wife in general, he means he doesn't want to have to deal with yet another existential crisis. He just wants an answer, he just wants any answer. Sadly, he's not going to find it from any of the other characters.
Roger's story, of course, is about death. Duh. It contains two dead people, him sitting in analysis mockingly pleading for his doctor to explain it all, and he's fretting that he thinks that life is just a meaningless series of experiences, doorways that are boring to open. Roger, like Don, has also fallen off the path to enlightenment. Last season he took LSD, divorced his wife, and was looking toward the future to try to find something worthwhile (Season 5 ended with us staring at his bare ass as he embraced the world). Either he's off that path or not finding it has put him right back where he was in the first place.
He's chasing after another comely brunette (who we don't get the pleasure to see) and pining after Joan. Maybe she's what will make him happy? It would have made the rest of us happy if we had seen a little bit more of her in the episode.
Anyway, Roger has two reilcs. The first is the water from the Jordan River his father brought back for his mother that was used to baptize almost everyone in the family. While freaking out at his mother's funeral (I would too if someone had barfed in the umbrella stand, but his outburst seemed a little over-blown), Roger makes the ultimate Freudian slip and says it's "my funeral." His ex-wife Mona comes upstairs and suggest maybe he would be more happy if he connected to the people who already love him rather than chasing after another one.
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That's when he goes downstairs to talk to Margaret. He brings up the family and presents her with this artifact, but all she wants her grandmother to leave her is money. Roger wants to talk about love and she only wants to talk about commerce. Already the water is losing its potency, Margaret didn't use it to baptize her son and, after her conversation about refrigerated trucks (not a bad investment at all!) she leaves it behind on the couch. She doesn't want a bit of the past, she doesn't want a bit of Roger, all that she wants is money and the future it can buy her.
Later Roger is looking for a shoe shine but his shoe shine man has died. His daughter sends along his shoe shine kit to Roger who takes it into his office and finally cries after feeling nothing about the death of his mother or Mona having found a new man in her life. This is what makes him cry. A shoe shine kit. Sometimes it feels good to let it all out, even if it's over some chemical soaked box.
The important thing about the artifacts in the episode is that they aren't good as objects, only instruments that people are willing to use. If, like the water and the shoe shine kit, they're not being used by someone then they're just so much junk, but, like Sandy's violin, when they're being used, they're the things that connect us all to each other.
Now Roger doesn't have any connection to anyone and it's starting to wear on him. He mentions being shipped out of Pearl Harbor (it's startling how three men in the premiere are all defined by their wars) but his cohort and his mother are dying off. Even the old ways are dying off. There's no one to know how to use a shoe shine kit and Roger is completely obsolete, left with nothing but some worthless junk, a bunch of stories no one wants to hear, and a room of women he's disappointed. He doesn't need analysis, he just needs something better to do.
As I said before, Betty's artifact is Sandy's violin, at least initially. Her relationship with Sandy is interesting in that everything that Betty says is defeated by her actions. Oh, our Betty, still a little bit fat (but she's "reducing!") and completely out of touch with herself. She is constantly defending her choice to stay at home and be the pretty wife and mother of increasingly ungrateful children, but that's what she never wanted at all and she has always fought against it. It's as if it's easier to propogate a myth than actually change.
That's why she's trying to find Sandy and why she holds onto Sandy's violin, since it is a symbol for the dream Sandy has for a better future. Anyway, Sandy says she wants to take off to New York and live an exciting life and Betty says that her life as a model in the Big Apple wasn't all that and she should wait until she's ready Later, when the hooligans at the St. Mark's flop house tell her that they "hate [her] life as much as [she] does," she fights against them. She tells that they are awful and she storms out, ripping her coat. Even being there she is changed, the fabric of her existence very literally sullied by her being in the tenement. (Anyway, they didn't hate her "goulash" all that much though.)
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But she leaves the violin there. Sandy is already a lost cause and Betty knows it. During her kitchen scene with Betty (which is about as touching as ice cold Betty ever gets) Sandy says, "It's amazing how quickly some people come up with lies." We all know that applies to Betty, but it applies to Sandy as well, who lied about Julliard and where she was going. She is going to turn out to be just like Betty, another girl disappointed by her options in life, someone who will defend her choices even as they make her miserable.
There is also something about Betty that wants to destroy Sandy. The younger generation is making the older characters increasingly nervous, but Betty seems to be the only one to wish harm on the younger children, when she makes that really inappropriate joke about Henry going to rape Sandy while she holds her down. That's the only thing that I can think of to explain her shockingly inappropriate comments, delivered with a smirk so small they seem to be entirely serious.
In the end though, Betty's real artifact is her hair. Like Don and Roger, this is something she is doing to try to be more authentic. This is, of course, a direct reaction to the hooligan calling her hair "bottled" when he reads her real color is brunette on her driver's license. She doesn't want to hide anymore. She wants to be the real Betty who may be a bit chunky and have brown hair, not the perfect Barbie doll everyone told her she had to be for Don (and look at how well that turned out anyway). Ironically, her new hair color is just as manufactured. She didn't let her roots grow out, she is just trying to cover up the new facade with the old one. Of course the kids hate it. The kids will always hate everything their parents do, especially when, like Bobby, he is faced with the reality behind the illusion that his mother has always sold to him. She is now "ugly," and he sees it for the first time.
Peggy, of course, is the exception that proves the rule. If we are looking at Don and how far he has fallen since the first episode, look at how much Peggy has risen. Her artifact is the lost footage that she found and, unlike everyone else, she can interact with that footage and use it to make beautiful music, as it were. She can shape it into something that is great, and that is what makes her different from the other three. This is Peggy's moment like Don's with the slide projector all those years ago. She is finally, truly ascendant.
And while she's is using strategies and tools that she learned from Don, she has also found her own strategies. Last season, when she went all Don Draper on the Heinz baked beans people and tried to force them to take her idea, she was shot down. Now, when the earphone people don't like her solutions to alter their aborted Super Bowl ad, she finds a way to get them to agree to let her do her job by being nice and courteous. While everyone still considers her part of a "frat," she has found a way to be both a woman and an executive at the same time, using a more subtle tactic that would have made a man look weak.
No, Peggy isn't far away from Don at all and she stays up late at night with Stan on the phone, still in close contact, letting him listen in on her big triumph. It's as if it doesn't really happen for her unless there is a way for it to get back to Don. And as much as she wasn't like Don with the client, she was just like him with her staff: stern and demanding but, at the end, giving them her sandwich and showing a bit of care. It was a classic Don Draper move.
But still, she isn't entirely confident with the power. Later, Ted, Peggy's boss, tells her that she has to tell the rest of her employees to go home. "They're not waiting for me?" she asks incredulously. Why would all these people be paying attention to her, trying to prove to her that she's a good worker when that's still all she wants is someone else's approval: Don's.
Peggy, unlike all these other people, is actually happy. Her sense of self-worth comes from her work and being great at her job. She doesn't see why these kids wouldn't want to be at work on New Year's Eve because that's just where she wants to be (I wouldn't want to be with her boyfriend Abe either, considering his vegetarian diet is giving him the trots).
Peggy is the younger generation that everyone is afraid of but, being part of the establishment, she is separate from it. When she hears about the Tonight Show stand-up act about the soldiers in Vietnam who cut the ears off their enemy, she blames the act for ruining her commercial. She doesn't blame the soldiers for doing something immoral and violent, she blames the "hippie" comic who brings it to the attention of the public. She is firmly on the side of "the man."
Though she may not be on the same page as her peers, she is the only one of the cast who is active and vital, the only person who is interacting with her object in a way that is bringing her happiness. That either makes her incredibly power or incredibly delusional, waiting for an awakening that may or may not happen. But one thing is for sure: Peggy is in control while everyone else is not.
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[Photo Credit: AMC]
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To be a great critic, you've got to have strong opinions and a forceful, eloquent manner of articulating them. Roger Ebert, who died yesterday at 70 after long battles with cancer, did just that, whether in print or on his TV show At the Movies. A lot of Ebert's opinions were pretty conventional — just look at the films included in his Great Movies books or Your Movie Sucks.
But when he went against the grain and praised a movie that everybody hated, his reasons for being contrarian could be that much more interesting. Here's Ebert in his own words (with links to the original reviews we're excerpting), as he defends, praises, or outright fawns over ten movies that you, and just about everybody else, including his fellow critics, absolutely despise.
Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer: 2%
"In the first movie, if the bus stopped, everyone would get killed. In this one, if the ocean liner doesn't stop, everyone will get killed. It's a small twist, I grant you, but a decisive one ... Is the movie fun? Yes. Especially when the desperate Sandra Bullock breaks into a ship's supply cabinet and finds a chainsaw, which I imagine all ships carry. And when pleasure boaters somehow fail to see a full-size runaway ocean liner until it is three feet from them. Movies like this embrace goofiness with an almost sensual pleasure. And so, on a warm summer evening, do I."
Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (2006): Tomatometer: 11%
Written Entirely from the Point of View of Garfield himself: "Having spent years within the cramped panels of a newspaper comic strip, I gloried in the freedom of the cinema. It allowed me to show off my body language: My languorous stretches, my graceful pirouettes, my daring leaps and bounds, my shameless affection for my owner, Jon (Breckin Meyer). There will be malcontents who claim I am not the real author of this review, because how could a cat know that after you mention a character in a movie, you include the name of the actor in parentheses? Do these people believe a cat lives in a vacuum? I read all the movie reviews, especially those of Ebert, a graceful and witty prose stylist with profound erudition, whose reviews are worth reading just for themselves, whether or not I have any intention of viewing the movie...
"Ebert, the smart and handsome one, gave thumbs up to my first movie, but Roeper, the other one, gave thumbs down and was particularly unkind. He went on forever attacking Ebert for liking Garfield. This from a man with enough taste to praise Duma. How very disappointing. One of Roeper's complaints was that I was animated and all of the other characters in the movie were 'real.' Do you have any idea how a statement like that hurts an actor who has worked all of his life as a media cat? Yes, Richard Roeper, I was animated. Read my lips: I am a character in a comic strip. What Roeper should have done for perfect consistency is complain that Dennis was not animated in Dennis the Menace."
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Knowing (2010) Tomatometer: 33%
"Knowing is among the best science-fiction films I've seen — frightening, suspenseful, intelligent and, when it needs to be, rather awesome. In its very different way, it is comparable to the great Dark City, by the same director, Alex Proyas. That film was about the hidden nature of the world men think they inhabit, and so is this one. The plot involves the most fundamental of all philosophical debates: Is the universe deterministic or random? Is everything in some way preordained or does it happen by chance? If those questions sound too abstract, wait until you see this film, which poses them in stark terms: What if we could know in advance when the Earth will end?"
The Happening (2008) Tomatometer: 17%
"For some time the thought has been gathering at the back of my mind that we are in the final act. We have finally insulted the planet so much that it can no longer sustain us. It is exhausted. It never occurred to me that vegetation might exterminate us. In fact, the form of the planet's revenge remains undefined in my thoughts, although I have read of rising sea levels and the ends of species...I suspect I'll be in the minority in praising this film. It will be described as empty, uneventful, meandering. But for some, it will weave a spell. It is a parable, yes, but it is also simply the story of these people and how their lives and existence have suddenly become problematic. We depend on such a superstructure to maintain us that one or two alterations could leave us stranded and wandering through a field, if we are that lucky."
2012 (2010) Tomatometer: 39%
"It's not so much that the Earth is destroyed, but that it's done so thoroughly. 2012, the mother of all disaster movies (and the father, and the extended family) spends half an hour on ominous set-up scenes (scientists warn, strange events occur, prophets rant and of course a family is introduced) and then unleashes two hours of cataclysmic special events hammering the Earth relentlessly. This is fun. 2012 delivers what it promises, and since no sentient being will buy a ticket expecting anything else, it will be, for its audiences, one of the most satisfactory films of the year."
Cop and a 1/2 (1993) Tomatometer: 17%
"Cop and a Half is a cheerful example of the 'wunza' movie, so named because of its popular formula, as in: 'Wunza cop and wunza robber,' or, in this case, "Wunza cop and wunza 8-year-old kid." You can almost hear the pitch being made in a producer's office, as the possibilities are discussed. There isn't much that's original in Cop and a Half, but there's a lot that's entertaining, and there's a winning performance by a young man with a big name, Norman D. Golden II, who plays little Devon Butler, a kid who dreams of someday wearing the shield."
She Hate Me (2004) Tomatometer: 19%
"Spike Lee's She Hate Me will get some terrible reviews. Scorched earth reviews. Its logic, style, presumption and sexual politics will be ridiculed. The Tomatometer will be down around 20. Many of the things you read in those reviews may be true from a conventional point of view. Most of the critics will be on safe ground. I will seem to be wrong. Seeming to be wrong about this movie is one of the most interesting things I've done recently. I've learned from it."
Anaconda (1997) Tomatometer: 38%
"Anaconda did not disappoint me. It's a slick, scary, funny Creature Feature, beautifully photographed and splendidly acted in high adventure style. Its snakes are thoroughly satisfying. The most dreaded predator of the Amazon, we learn, the anaconda can grow to 40 feet in length, and crushes its prey before engorging it whole (so whole that it eats an entire jaguar, leaving behind only a single poignant eyeball)...Anaconda is an example of one of the hardest kinds of films to make well: a superior mass-audience entertainment. It has the effects and the thrills, but it also has big laughs, quirky dialogue and a gruesome imagination. You've got to like a film where a lustful couple sneaks out into the dangerous jungle at night and suddenly the guy whispers, 'Wait—did you hear that? Silence!'''
Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace (1999) Tomatometer: 57%
"There is a sense of discovery in scene after scene of The Phantom Menace, as he tries out new effects and ideas, and seamlessly integrates real characters and digital ones, real landscapes and imaginary places...As surely as Anakin Skywalker points the way into the future of Star Wars, so does The Phantom Menace raise the curtain on this new freedom for filmmakers...As for the bad rap about the characters—hey, I've seen space operas that put their emphasis on human personalities and relationships. They're called Star Trek movies. Give me transparent underwater cities and vast hollow senatorial spheres any day."
Crash (2005) Tomatometer: 75%
Editor's Note: We realize this is a Certified Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, not to mention the fact that the movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture for 2005. However, in the years since its victory, an overwhelming backlash has met Crash, putting into stark relief just how ferociously Ebert championed the movie at the time, putting it at No. 1 on his Best of 2005 list and introducing it at numerous festivals. He also thought it's a movie that can change its audience for the better.
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"Not many films have the possibility of making their audiences better people. I don't expect Crash to work any miracles, but I believe anyone seeing it is likely to be moved to have a little more sympathy for people not like themselves. The movie contains hurt, coldness and cruelty, but is it without hope? Not at all. Stand back and consider. All of these people, superficially so different, share the city and learn that they share similar fears and hopes. Until several hundred years ago, most people everywhere on earth never saw anybody who didn't look like them. They were not racist because, as far as they knew, there was only one race. You may have to look hard to see it, but Crash is a film about progress."
Follow Christian Blauvelt on Twitter @Ctblauvelt
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“You’re in St. Pete now. We do it gangsta. Gangsta!” - Alien
Watching Spring Breakers, shot mostly in my hometown of St. Petersburg, FL and its adjoining community of St. Pete Beach, was a transcendental experience for this native of the Tampa Bay area. Not because it accurately depicted all the surface details of life in our glistening jewel of a Gulf Coast burg — it didn’t — but because it captured so beautifully the feeling of living there. Where others see debauchery and soullessness while watching Spring Breakers, I see home.
I grew up in paradise. I started where most people want to end up in life. Unlike the East Coast of Florida, which has a frenetic, metropolitan quality — like New York City having decamped to sunnier shores — the Gulf Coast is pretty quiet. And everyone in the Tampa Bay Area, and St. Petersburg in particular, seem to be on a more relaxed wavelength. As a kid, I’d actually do my homework while laying on the beach. Many of the classes at my school were held out of doors. As a now-pasty writer living in New York you’d never know it to look at me, but I’ve probably spent more days on the beach than just about anyone my age. (Bring it on, skin cancer!) I take great pride in my roots even if, unlike James Franco's Alien, I don’t have St. Pete’s area code, 727, tattooed across my chest. That said, after having lived in the Big Apple for five years I do still have a cellphone with a 727 area code. I never intend to change it.
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So it might strike you as funny that I say I liked Spring Breakers so much, since on the surface, with its depiction of out-of-state coeds participating in a Caligula-caliber St. Pete Beach spring break scene, then going on a murderous crime spree, it may seem like my hometown has been painted in a negative light. I disagree with that assessment. I think director Harmony Korine is using St. Pete the way Joseph Conrad used the Congo in Heart of Darkness, the way Michael Powell &amp; Emeric Pressburger used the Himalayas in Black Narcissus: as a place of such magic and overwhelming beauty that it can drive the weaker-willed to madness and mayhem. Do most people who visit St. Pete lose their minds the way Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, and Selena Gomez do? Well, not to that degree, no. But I do have a friend who was so overcome by St. Pete that she vowed to leave her husband and move there on the spot. My own dad fell so hard for the area that he decided to risk being shunned by his parents to attend Eckerd College, a St. Pete institution of higher education that at the time was only 18 years old, over the family alma mater, Yale. (It turns out he did burn his bridges with his family for that choice, but I don’t think he regretted it.)
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All of which is to say that I think St. Pete’s transformative power is similar to what was conveyed in Spring Breakers, even if its charms are, in reality, far more subtle. It’s a vacation destination, yes, and we rely heavily on tourist dollars, but we residents of St. Pete also enjoy how untouched and pristine our community still is in many ways. When I told one local friend that Spring Breakers was shot there, his response was “Wait…since when has St. Pete had a spring break scene?” Fort Lauderdale, St. Pete ain’t. And we like it that way. So let me take you on a tour of my St. Petersburg, by way of some of the locations you see in Spring Breakers.
The Sunshine Skyway Bridge
The Tampa Bay area’s most iconic landmark, the golden-spired Sunshine Skyway bridge serves as our spring breakers' gateway to paradise (or hell) in the movie. Never mind that it’s located at the southern tip of St. Pete and would never be the way four northern girls from out of state would arrive. Its glistening presence is so dramatic it needed to be in the movie. Yet even the Sunshine Skyway is tinged with darkness. It’s the site of the Tampa Bay area’s 9/11.
On May 9, 1980 a freighter called the Summit Venture approached the span of the bridge that used to streak across Tampa Bay on the site of the current Sunshine Skyway. Because of a storm, the Venture was thrown off course and collided into one of the bridge’s support columns. A 1,200 foot section of the bridge collapsed into Tampa Bay. Six cars, a truck, and a Greyhound bus fell 150 feet into the water. 35 people were killed. Part of the old bridge was converted into a fishing pier in the years after. The rest was demolished and replaced with the current Sunshine Skyway, a structure built to withstand such collisions. It was the kind of incident that put into perspective the way we live in the Tampa Bay area. Tourists flock to our shores to escape from the toil and pressures of “real life.” But that doesn't mean the people who actually live there don’t have problems and tragedies of their own to contend with, problems and tragedies that no number of walks on the beach or picturesque sunsets can ameliorate.
The Coral Reef Resort
When Sergio Leone came to St. Pete Beach to film a scene for Once Upon a Time in America, he chose our most famous hotel: a pink, Mediterranean-style castle called the Don Cesar. So did Robert Altman when shooting his debacle of a film Health. But Harmony Korine wisely knew not to film there. He chose a far cheaper dive, the Coral Reef Resort, as the site of the spring breakers’ poolside orgy. It has a carefully landscaped, free-form pool with bridges and waterfalls, but, other than that, the Coral Reef Resort, like so much of St. Pete Beach, looks straight out of an Elvis movie from the early ‘60s. It’s definitely the kind of place spring breakers would flock to, if we actually did have a spring break culture. Mostly, it looks like this: pretty empty. Only in a movie would this place be glutted with hundreds of college-age kids.
By the way, topless sunbathing is most definitely not allowed on St. Pete Beach. The police patrol the sands pretty vigilantly, and the one and only woman I can actually remember seeing sunbathing topless was ordered to cover up almost asap. All those coeds in Spring Breakers seemingly auditioning to be on Girls Gone Wild would be hit with stiff citations for public indecency. If you’re actually within the grounds of a private resort, like the Coral Reef, you maybe could get away with it, but only if it’s sanctioned by the hotel management. And even then, the topless bather in question would have to be very careful to stay out of outside view.
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That doesn’t mean we don’t have plenty of half-naked flesh on view everywhere you turn, though. Per Alien’s mantra, bikinis really do seem to be the uniform of most women who visit St. Pete Beach. As a kid growing up in that environment, you never knew anything different, making you adopt from an early age a rather European view of women being scantily clad.
NEXT: Forget topless sunbathing. Here’s the thing you can’t do on St. Pete Beach that’s really going to shock you.
Now this one’s really going to shock you: alcohol isn’t allowed on the beach. I know! It’s crazy. Of course, that’s one law that’s very frequently broken, as intrepid beachcombers smuggle in all kinds of sweet brew via their coolers. But if you were caught chugging the way those kids at the Coral Reef Resort were chugging in the movie, you’d be in the slammer faster than you could say “Volstead Act.”
Historic Corey Avenue
This is the historic heart of St. Pete Beach, a row of five-and-ten cent shops, galleries featuring local art, and a couple sidewalk cafes. It’s the quaint strip where Selena, Vanessa, Ashley, and Rachel ride mopeds. (Seriously, this isn’t Bermuda. Nobody rides mopeds there.) The real prize of Corey Avenue, however, is the Beach Theatre (upper left in the photo), an old movie house that’s been in operation since 1941, that you can glimpse as the gals are taking their joyride. To everyone’s horror, including this St. Pete émigré in New York, the Beach Theatre went out of business for the first time ever in November, after showing (the, with hindsight, ironically titled) End of Watch as its last picture show. Its owner, Michael France, a Hollywood screenwriter who wrote or co-wrote GoldenEye, Cliffhanger, The Hulk, and Fantastic Four, has been locked in a heated divorce battle, with the beloved theater a property under contention.
The Twistee Treat
One of the most unsettling scenes in Spring Breakers is when the four gals sit outside a convenience store—St. Pete Beach’s Sunshine Discount Food and Gift Corner, in the lower left background of the photo above—and hold a group singalong of Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time.” It’s in the parking lot of this convenience store that Hudgens, Benson, and Korine’s character reenact for Gomez the robbery they committed to fund their trip. In the background, right next to the parking lot in which they’re loitering, you see one of St. Pete Beach’s greatest icons: The Twistee Treat. It’s a one-room shack shaped to look like an ice cream cone that—guess what!—sells ice cream. This is the place where young people, the few spring breakers we get especially, congregate to cool off. Many a summer night I’ve clutched a cone at the Twistee Treat, though, sadly, no one has ever serenaded me with “Baby One More Time.”
Also, consider how Spring Breakers shows us the Twistee Treat, then just a few minutes later introduces us to Gucci Mane’s gangster…who has an ice cream cone tattooed to his face! Only then does it become clear what a complex image system Spring Breakers really possesses.
The Dark Side of Paradise
But, really, how does my nostalgia for St. Pete compute with the incredible darkness that comes across in the film? Because there is indeed a dark side to paradise. I’ve seen it for myself. There is a strong drug culture throughout the Tampa Bay area that sometimes can erupt into violence. I myself once lost someone very close to me to drug addiction and, eventually, suicide.
Beyond that, though, if you actually live in the Tampa Bay area, you’re forced to confront the fundamental paradox of living in paradise: you may be surrounded by incredible beauty, enjoy a much more laid-back rhythm to life, and have every material comfort provided for you. But once all the basic necessities — and the additional pleasures that so many strive their whole lifetimes to achieve — have been satisfied, you’re confronted with the reality that you and your loved ones are still going to die someday, that this beauty cannot last. That’s the basic existential paradox of living in paradise: you have everything, but it always reminds you that you will lose it all in the end. Throw in the very real traumas of foreclosure and unemployment that have beset the Tampa Bay area, and you’ve got a recipe for unhappiness. I’d venture to say that may be a reason why Men’s Health magazine declared St. Petersburg “the most depressed city in America” last year. Chalk it up to a variation on James Taylor’s “sunny days that I thought would never end” scenario. Unfortunately, some people turn to drugs in their despair, others get involved in crime, but mostly the depressed of the Tampa Bay area turn to the kind of conspicuous materialism you see in Franco's Alien. Most of my classmates at my prep school in St. Pete were like slightly more upscale versions of Alien, obsessed with their possessions and driven be a nouveau riche mindset to flaunt all they had. One kid totaled five Porsches during my high-school years. His daddy bought him a new one after every single reckless crash.
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But as much as recognize the real-world roots of the darkness you see in Spring Breakers, I choose not to focus on that. I have too many incredible memories. Like the time when I was three years old and my mom and I met Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O’Neal on the beach — they were staying in the posh Don Cesar, of course. Their son Redmond, a year older than myself, gave me my first-ever piece of bubblegum. With hindsight, given Redmond’s highly-publicized struggle with drugs, I suppose he was “dealing” even then. But my favorite memories are the simple things: taking in the sunset, watching a poolside movie, listening to the cicadas that add their hum to the night air. It’s possible that I had it so good as a kid that I could find myself a candidate for the Woody Allen Syndrome: “I had a wonderful childhood...and a miserable adulthood.” But I wouldn’t trade those years for anything. Spring break forever, indeed.
Follow Christian Blauvelt on Twitter @Ctblauvelt
[Photo Credits: A24 Films; CoralReefFlorida.com; Google Maps; John Picken/flickr; Facebook]
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Shrouded in mystery is Star Wars: The Clone Wars' Season 5 finale arc. Recent episodes have very much delivered on the “Who Will Fall?” tagline that Lucasfilm and Cartoon Network have been using the past few months. But though the deaths of Pre Vizsla, Satine, and Savage Opress have been major—even shocking and moving—there’s been a sense that those have just been a prelude to the emotional devastation to come. Namely, it’s the feeling among fans of the show that these final episodes will answer the all important unanswered question of The Clone Wars: So what happens to Ahsoka? I haven’t seen the three episodes that follow “Sabotage” yet, so I’ve got no inside information for you, I’m afraid. But based on Ashley Eckstein’s responses during the Clone Wars Google Hangout I co-hosted last weekend, it sounds like something major is about to happen to Anakin’s Padawan. Major enough that these episodes were thought to be even more fitting as season cappers than the truly epic Darth Maul arc that just concluded. “Sabotage” feels like only a tiny fraction of the story to come, an overture to an intense emotional journey. What’s fascinating is that it included a number of story beats that were like mirror image reflections of plot points in Revenge of the Sith…further indication that, whereas that film sealed Anakin’s fate, these episodes will in fact have Ahsoka meet her destiny, whatever it may be.
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“Sabotage” began with an air battle over Cato Neimoidia. The Separatists had invaded the planet, which is odd, because I could have sworn that Cato Neimoidia was already a key member of the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Maybe the Republic had conquered it and now the Separatists had launched an invasion to take it back? Either way, it’s becoming clear that we’re heading into the final stages of the war. The fight for the Neimoidian purse world drew Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker’s involvement shortly before the events of Revenge of the Sith, as told in James Luceno’s novel Labyrinth of Evil, and would continue through the events of Order 66. You’ll recall that Plo Koon meets his end when he’s shot down above one of the planet’s famous bridge cities. (How did Plo Koon fanatic Dave Filoni not sneak in an appearance from the respirator-wearing Jedi master during this opening battle?)
This presentation of the Battle of Cato Neimodia was notable for a couple reasons. First, it’s the debut of the fan-winged Eta-2 Actis starfighter on the Clone Wars TV show! Kind of an intermediate design between the old Delta-7 Aethersprite Jedi Starfighter and the Imperial Era Tie Fighter, with a Sienar-style octagonal viewport, it gets my vote as the most beautiful starfighter design to emerge from the entire period of the Clone Wars. It also confirms what we’ve already been saying. The Eta-2 Actis was only introduced in the last year of the year, meaning that this conflict is headed toward its endgame.
Second, and more important, the events that opened “Sabotage” directly mirrored the Battle of Coruscant sequence in Revenge of the Sith. But whereas Anakin found himself in the position of helping save Obi-Wan from the swarm of buzz droids that had overrun his fighter, here it was Anakin who needed to be saved by his Padawan. When the buzz droids that had flocked en masse to the underside of his fighter caused some kind of exhaust leak that rendered Anakin unconscious, Ahsoka made a mid-air jump from her fighter to his to help steer him to safety. (If only she had let him crash, the galaxy may have been spared so much!) It’s the kind of heroics we’ve seen from Anakin himself so many times, and it proves, once again, that Ahsoka is truly her master’s Padawan. Like the opening of Revenge of the Sith, this sequence showed a master and apprentice bonded together by war, seemingly inseparable. And yet by the end of the film, Anakin will have gone from trying to save his master to trying to kill him on a lava planet. Could a similar trajectory await Ahsoka and Anakin’s relationship? That seems like a big leap, but it would be fitting with the moral of this episode: “Sometimes even the smallest doubt can shake the greatest belief.” We shall see…
NEXT: Could a rogue Jedi be capable of bombing the Temple? There is precedent…
No sooner had Ahsoka revived Anakin Master Yoda sent them a message: the Jedi Temple had been bombed. And since the bombing had occurred from within the highly-secure Temple, there is a chance a Jedi could have been responsible for it. Only Jedi who weren’t there when it happened could truly be trusted to investigate the matter. And of course, out of all the Jedi spread out on all of that Galaxy Far, Far Away’s battlefields, Yoda wanted Anakin and Ahsoka to lead the investigation.
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When they got to the Temple, Anakin and Ahsoka met with Russo-ISC, a forensics droid with a haltingly emphatic cadence and a tendency to stoop down and throw back a pair of mechanical goggles on his head. Yup, he’s the robotic answer to David Caruso on CSI: Miami. I mean, his name is “Russo.” And the “ISC” is there just in case you missed the comparison. (According to Dave Filoni in our Google Hangout last weekend, George Lucas is a big CSI fan.) Together they went over the crime scene. Anakin was quick to note that not every Jedi is in favor of the war. There are political idealists among the Order. I love how much contempt Matt Lanter put into Anakin’s delivery of “political idealists,” as if such idealism were tantamount to treason and terrorism. I’m kind of surprised Filoni, a huge fan of The Big Lebowski, didn’t throw in an exchange between Ahsoka and Anakin where the Padawan would say something like “There are Jedi pacifists, and some with emotional problems,” to which Anakin would reply, “You mean…beyond pacifism?”
But to be serious, yes, there had been Jedi who refused to fight in the war, and Jedi who were outright traitors. Other than Dooku and Krell, the Clone Wars TV series hasn’t really addressed them all that much. In the 2003-2006 line of Clone Wars comics, there were many, including Mace Windu’s former lightsaber instructor, Sora Bulq. And Mace Windu’s former Padawan, Depa Billaba, who went all Col. Kurtz while on a mission to Windu’s home planet of Haruun Kal. By the Force, what I would give to see the Clone Wars TV series adapt Matthew Stover’s Shatterpoint for an arc. We can dream, right?
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The evidence at the temple started to point to a flight-deck engineer named Jackar Bowmani. A flight-deck engineer who happened to be an expert at ordinance and explosives. I mean, they couldn’t find Bowmani—they guy had totally disappeared—so he had to have been the trigger man, right? Oh, well, he could also have been totally vaporized in the blast, since so many had been killed, but no one seemed to think of that until Russo-ISC produced a severed hand that belonged to the accused, and obviously deceased, bomber. Nanodroids of a highly volatile nature were found inside the hand, suggesting that Bowmani himself had been the bomb. Did that mean he had been a suicide bomber? When they brought in his wife, Letta, for questioning, she mentioned how rigorous the psychological profiling was for workers at the Temple. It had been her husband’s dream to work there. He would never set off a bomb there.
NEXT: So just what does your average, ordinary Republic citizen think of the Jedi?
Outside the Temple a crowd of protesters had gathered. Initially, from the previews of this episode, I had thought we were seeing a generic anti-war crowd who were specifically objecting to the Jedi’s role in managing the fight. But that didn’t seem to be the case here. These actually were relatives of the Temple support staff who had perished in the bombing. They figured that a Jedi must have been responsible for their loved ones’ deaths. Even though many Jedi had died in the blast as well.
It does point out just how precariously positioned the Order is at this point. Throughout much of the Republic, and certainly on Coruscant, there doesn’t seem to be a draft. The clones are the cannon fodder used to prosecute the war against the Separatists, and the Jedi lead them. In a sense the war has been privatized. And these clones are mostly fighting droids, not flesh-and-blood insurgents. With a few major exceptions, of course. The fact is, it’s probably hard for most of the Republic’s citizens to really feel like they have a stake in this war, that they have some responsibility for it. They haven’t been asked to sacrifice for it. They’ve got the clones to do the bleeding and dying for them. Their biggest involvement in the conflict comes through one-off traumatic events that occur every now and then, like when Coruscant lost power following the Battle of Sarapin and again later when General Grievous ordered a suicide bombing on the planet’s main power grid. Obviously, if you’re on a planet that gets invaded, that’s the ultimate terror. We can only imagine the chaos that must have engulfed Coruscant during General Grievous’ week-long space battle over the planet that opened Revenge of the Sith. After that, no wonder the citizens of the Republic were practically begging to hand over the keys to the galaxy to Palpatine. The fact is, without being asked to sacrifice much for the war, when these traumatic events happen people in the Republic feel doubly helpless, like they have absolutely no control over the chaos swirling around them. Maybe Palpatine could save them, but that’s it. Certainly not the Jedi, who’ve been fighting a three-year-long conflict with little headway and can’t even safeguard their own Temple.
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Anakin and Ahsoka decided to take a plunge into the Coruscant underworld to investigate Jackar’s place of residence. Damn, Ahsoka’s “I would have thought working for the Jedi paid better” at seeing their former employee’s lower-city tenement was about as cluelessly obnoxious as Anne Hathaway saying “Yay for dental!” during her SAG Awards speech. Ahsoka’s had it pretty easy, all things considered. Fighting a war may be tough, but putting in a 9 to 5 job to support your family and carve out a place for yourself in the galaxy? That’s a life-long commitment. The pad was pretty squalid, and I half expected to see the chalk outline of a Gungan on the floor, as was originally planned for Cad Bane’s Coruscant apartment way back in Season 2. Ahsoka found some nanodroids in food that was laying about. (Think of the nanodroids like Star Trek’s nanoprobes, except that instead of getting assimilated into the Borg Collective these just blow you up.) That must have been how Jackar ingested them. But did he eat them willingly or by force? Also think of this like Downton Abbey for a moment. Did Mr. Bates feed his wife the poison, or did she take it herself to frame him for her death?
Which is to say that I think Letta may in fact be getting set up here. I know, I know, it doesn’t look good for her, and she basically admits that she fed the nanodroids to her husband after she returns to the apartment, then uses some nifty parkour moves in a failed attempt to flee from the Jedi. I mean, she confessed! But isn’t this all a bit too convenient? A bombing happens at the Jedi Temple and the primary suspect, who had nanoprobes his bloodstream, appears to have been totally vaporized in the blast…with only his hand left behind to confirm his death. His oddly-accented, proletarian worker-hatted wife then becomes the immediate suspect. Could it be that Jackar pulled a Peter Pettigrew, cut off his hand, drizzled it with nanodroids, then had someone plant it at the scene of the blast to implicate his wife. Winter’s Bone tells us that cutting off your hand is a Meth Country trick for making the Feds think you're dead. For all we know Letta could be in on it, and she’s just agreed to take the fall for whatever reason. And from the preview, we definitely know that Letta is murdered in prison next week and Ahsoka takes the blame in a Hitchcockian “wrong man on the run” kind of scenario. This appears to be a massively orchestrated campaign to discredit the Jedi Order, and we’ve so far only seen the tiniest fraction of it.
NEXT: This episode was named after a 1936 Alfred Hitchcock film that also features a bombing. What’s the connection here to the Master of Suspense?
Speaking of the Master of Suspense, every episode in this four-part arc is a play on an Alfred Hitchcock movie title. After this we’ve got “The Jedi Who Knew Too Much,” “To Catch a Jedi,” and “The Wrong Jedi.” But this episode was “Sabotage,” after Hitch’s 1936 British thriller of the same name. If that film’s most famous scene is any clue to what happened in this episode, it may suggest that Bowmani was in fact innocent, or at least the unwitting triggerman of the explosion. The scene I’m talking about from Sabotage is one in which a young boy is riding a London bus, while carrying with him a package. A package that he doesn’t realize contains a bomb. And it’s ticking down to zero. Hitchcock’s editing ratchets up the suspense to 11. He intercuts shots of the boy, the other passengers, and glimpses of the street, with almost 20 repeated close-up views of the package, just to emphasize the deadliness of what the boy is carrying until the tension is to the breaking point. Here’s the scene I’m talking about:
Hitchcock later said he regretted this scene, because if a sympathetic character is killed so indiscriminately, it results in the audience checking out of the movie. Of course, he would upend that theory altogether with that little matter of Janet Leigh in the shower halfway through Psycho. All this is to say, that if this episode is a true homage to Sabotage, Bowmani probably was a fall guy. I personally would like to think it’s his wife who’s been set-up—hence she’s murdered in the next episode to silence her—but we shall see.
NEXT: What will be Ahsoka’s ultimate fate?
What’s interesting, though, is that Lucasfilm chose Sabotage as the reference point for this episode and not Hitchcock’s later film made during the war, 1942’s Saboteur, which is one of his classic “wrong man on the run movies.” They obviously just wanted this episode to be an inciting incident for what’s to come. Next week, Ahsoka gets her “wrong Jedi on the run” storyline. That brings me back to how I opened this recap: with the suggestion that “Sabotage” intentionally included several story beats from Revenge of the Sith. If it follows the model of that film, then this is the story of how Ahsoka ultimately leaves the Jedi Order. I don’t think she’s going to turn to the Dark Side. I don’t think she’s going to slaughter younglings. But my theory is that—and mind you, I haven’t seen the follow-up episodes, so I’m totally guessing here—when all is said and done, Ahsoka will actually walk away from the Jedi and the war. The fact that her exit from the Order will be more contemplative, and yes, idealistic, shows how fundamentally different in character and temperament she is, in fact, from Anakin.
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It’s something I pointed out in my recap of “The Lawless.” The Clone Wars seems interested in incorporating story beats from the movies every now and then—just as the Expanded Universe has. Last week’s episode was full of them. So was “Sabotage.” It’s almost Star Wars’ variation on Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence, the idea that we’re fated to undergo the same experiences over and over again. The Jedi Temple is ransacked and the Jedi themselves are hunted to extinction following Order 66? Well, that’s just like what happened during the Sack of Coruscant in the Great Galactic War 3,600 years earlier. And just like what will happen 130 years later when Darth Krayt’s Sith shatter the Jedi Order on Ossus and almost break the Skywalker line. This galaxy’s history is cyclical more than linear, or to borrow a phrase from another great space opera: “All this has happened before. And all this will happen again.” You could argue that this is just Lucasfilm regurgitating the same plot points over and over again, because of a lack of ideas. But I strongly disagree. I think it paints a portrait of a galaxy in perpetual flux, in which darkness and light ebb and flow and never entirely eclipse one another. Just like there were two atom bombs dropped on Japan, there were two Death Stars. Just like, as much as we think we have evolved, we wage wars based on fears and ambitions not that different from our ancestors thousands of years ago. Where there is sentience, there will be an eternal battle between order and entropy. In galaxies near and far.
And on that philosophical note, I leave you, Padawan Readers, until next week, when the plot thickens quite a bit more for Little Miss Tano. See you then!
Follow Christian Blauvelt on Twitter @Ctblauvelt
[Photo Credit: Lucasfilm]
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Times have been tough for Aidan, the vampire played by Sam Witwer who rooms with a ghost and a werewolf on Syfy's version of the U.K. hit Being Human. He's been drained of blood and buried underground, and the entire vampire way of life is threatened by the flu epidemic that's swept the planet: AKA, no fresh blood. To complicate matters, his roommate Sally (Meaghan Rath) is no longer a ghost, thus making what seemed to be an impossible romance very possible after all. And this is only four episodes into Season 3! We caught up with Witwer about what the character's been going through and what's ahead. The amazing thing is, despite all that's happened, Witwer doesn't even think Aidan's storyline truly kicks into high gear until next week.
Hollywood.com: Aidan's been through a lot in these recent episodes. He's been buried alive, drained of blood, and now the flu epidemic has resulted in a kind of vampire armageddon, since they can't get fresh blood. What's Aidan's state of mind right now?
SW: Oh, he’s completely unhinged. He doesn’t know what to think, doesn’t know where to go. One of the things that was so interesting was that we had Henry (Kyle Schmid) and Aidan reunited, except that the roles were reversed. It used to be that Aidan was the calm one with all the answers and Henry was the one flipping out saying, “What about this? What about that?” Now it’s the opposite. Aidan is so out of his element that he's panicking, looking for any kind of answer, and Henry is like, “Well, I have the answer. You just might not like it.” That’s a lot of fun. But this guy? He doesn’t know what the hell’s going on, and really he’s not going to start getting on track in terms of putting himself back together for awhile. That underground thing really messed Aidan up.
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HW: And yet Aidan never really shows just how messed up he is...
SW: One of the most fun things about playing him, and it’s something that we discovered this year in a big way, is that he’s a character with a lot of subtext. And if you don’t have that subtext, the character doesn’t work. Josh (Sam Huntington), Sally, Nora (Kristen Hager), they all tell you what’s going on with them. Aidan? Anything he tells you is a lie. He’ll never tell you what’s actually going on with him. He’ll say, “Yeah, I’m fine.” Well, no, he’s not. Not even a little bit. And so the fun of it has been seeking out those moments of subtext where you see what’s actually going on with him, where you see him expressing himself honestly, rather than trying to cover up what’s happening.
HW: How is he dealing with Sally no longer being a ghost?
SW: That's an interesting question, because you have two people who absolutely love each other very much and yet never ever considered that there was any possibility of romance between each other. But now, circumstances have changed. For one, she’s a person now. You can touch her. She’s real. But two, she’s been through so much since we first met her, so she’s a much more mature character. She’s a bit more world-weary, much like Aidan. So it’s almost like they’re being reintroduced to each other, and there are some confusing moments where they go, “Wait a second? Is this a possibility? Weird.” I’m not saying that it becomes a big thing, but, hey, maybe it will.
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HW: Aidan's always wanted to be rid of the vampire world, and now he's basically gotten his wish. Is this a "Be careful what you wish for" kind of scenario?
SW: Henry and Aidan are trying to figure out how to navigate this new world, and without Henry trapping people and draining them of blood. Basically the apocalypse has happened for vampires. They can’t find clean blood anywhere because of the flu pandemic so all the vampires are either dead or dying. The thing is, the world has moved on and hasn’t even noticed this has happened to the vampires. So Aidan’s walking on crowded streets...but also feeling entirely isolated. Aidan’s always said, “I’d love to be in a world, in which I wouldn’t have to deal with vampires.” But now he’s in that world, and he finds that it’s tremendously isolating, and there were people among that society that in fact he did like and would have wanted to spend more time with. Definitely a “be careful what you wish for” kind of scenario.
HW: Otherwise it seems like Aidan's story is a slow-burn this season.
SW: Going forward, he’s going to try to assert his moral authority on Henry, and it may very well backfire, which could send Aidan to a destructive place. Who knows? Aidan’s story is interesting, because we have a lot of things to get out of the way. In terms of where the season goes, Aidan’s story is just getting warmed up. I’d say it only gets pretty eventful around episodes 5 or 6. Aidea’s a slow simmer this season. But by the end his story is a freight train with a lot of momentum behind it, and I’m very happy with how it progresses.
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HW: There was a lot of setup in the first few episodes, but now Season 3 seems to be settling into a groove. Do you think the fans will like when it's all said and done?
SW: This season is the show that I saw in my head when I first read the script. It’s absolutely our character season. I’ve read some reviews where people are concerned that a lot of plot points are being introduced and don’t know how they’ll be developed, and it’s so nice to just sit back and be like, “Don’t worry about it.” This is all set-up, but eventually we settle into character moment after character moment, dealing with the things that we’ve set up. It’s not what I’d call a plot-heavy season, except that when the plot does take a twist or turn, it’s really momentous. This season is definitely more about existing as these people in their world, living in their shoes, seeing how they interact with each other and develop their relationships. That’s the show I wanted to do. A show that’s about these people, who they want, how they feel about each other. And then suddenly the crap hits the fan, something insane happens and you get right back to the people. Anna Fricke has really delivered the character season.
Follow Christian Blauvelt on Twitter @Ctblauvelt
[Photo Credit: Syfy]
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With Killing Them Softly opening nationwide today, it’ll be the first time in five years that the words “Directed by Andrew Dominik” have appeared on an American movie screen. That delay is because the Australian director’s last film, his U.S. debut The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, only made back half of its $30 million production budget with its worldwide grosses. Even worse, it netted only $3.9 million in the States. When I ask him if he sees Killing Them Softly as a natural follow-up to Jesse James, Dominik, 45, merely says, “I guess I don’t really think that way. I’m not in exact control of what I do. This was just the project I could get going.” The fact then that the Weinstein Company is opening Killing Them Softly in 2,424 theaters shows just how much confidence they have in the film—and Dominik’s vision.
A razor-sharp thriller starring Brad Pitt as a philosophically-minded hitman hired by a mid-level boss (Richard Jenkins) to hunt down the brainless twerps (Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn) who robbed a mob-protected card game, Killing Them Softly is also a not-so-subtle commentary on the intersection of criminality and capitalism. Though the George V. Higgins novel it’s based on, Cogan’s Trade, came out in 1974, Dominik set his plot in October 2008, right in the middle of the worst financial collapse the United States had faced since the Great Depression. As characters throughout the film discuss the power plays they hope will land them big bucks, TV monitors show George W. Bush and Barack Obama discussing the turmoil that had engulfed the economy four years ago. The implication is clear: the 2008 bailout that saved Wall Street despite its bad behavior isn’t that different from the windfalls awaiting several characters in the film who’ve proven that crime sometimes does pay. Near the end of Killing Them Softly, Pitt’s Jackie Cogan even says, “America is not a country. It’s just a business.” That speaks very much to a theme Dominik previously developed in Jesse James: that there’s a disparity between the way we see ourselves, as individuals and as a country, and the way we really are.
But don’t think this is all just political sturm und drang. Killing Them Softly is actually a comedy. One of the hoods who robs a cardgame has a Cruella De Vil-style get-rich-quick scheme to steal dogs. And James Gandolfini plays the anti-Tony Soprano as a hitman associate of Cogan’s who, to say the least, has lost his killer instinct. “If the film took itself seriously, I don’t think it would be much fun,” Dominik says. “It’d be like preaching to the choir or something.”
We asked the director to expound upon some of his film’s ideas, and Dominik was more than willing to oblige.
Hollywood.com: How do you think the comedic tone of the film appealed to the actors?
Andrew Dominik: Well, Brad signed on thirty minutes after I pitched Killing Them Softly to him, because we had worked together before obviously. I think it was Jim [Gandolfini] who really got into the whole comedy aspect. Jim is always just going to make his guy real. I wanted him because he’s such an intensely sensitive guy, and there’s a real sensitivity to everything that he does. I could imagine Jim playing this really f***ed-up character and caring about him. That was my motive for getting him.
HW: Gandolfini’s character in the film is almost like the burntout end-state of Tony Soprano. A once formidable player now rendered useless. I thought there was a great mix of comedy and pathos in that character. He could have been a cartoon but you end up feeling really sorry for him. I did, anyway.
AD: Yeah, me too. There’s a real sensitivity inside the guy, even though he’s so f***ed up.
HW: Even though the two films are very different stylistically, I feel there is kind of connection between Killing Them Softly and Jesse James thematically.
AD: I think that Killing Them Softly is a little more one-sided in its view--my view--and a little more pop-y. I think Jesse James tries to look at its characters in a little more balanced way, as two sides of the same coin.
HW: It’s interesting you decided to bring a George Higgins novel to the screen, considering that only one of his novels had been adapted as a movie [1970’s The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which became a 1973 film starring Robert Mitchum], but especially that you decided to update it and set it in 2008. What inspired that choice?
AD: I got Cogan’s Trade because I had seen and loved The Friends of Eddie Coyle. So I looked Higgins up and saw that this guy was like a treasure trove. He’d written a whole lot of stories that had a real sense of authenticity about them, since he’d been a prosecutor. This book is a really simple crime and punishment story, even though it takes place entirely in the criminal world. But when it really caught fire for me was when I realized it’s a story about an economic crisis, and how it paralleled what was going on in the world at the time. And so updating it really seemed like the thing to do.
CB: There’s a lot of political commentary in this film, usually conveyed when we hear speeches from George W. Bush and Barack Obama talking about the financial collapse on the background. Were you trying to present this story as a microcosm for what was happening in the country at large?
AD: Yes, very much so. I think the attraction of crime movies is that they are little stories about capitalism. This is the genre in which the capitalist ideal is presented upfront. It’s the one genre in which it’s completely acceptable for characters to care about money, and maybe that’s the appeal of it. In some ways I find the people in crime films much more recognizable, much more like the people I meet in real life, than I do, say, characters in romantic comedies or other movies that on some level are concerned with reaffirming family values. Also, my experience of America, approaching it as an outsider, is just how much of life in this country is based around the dollar. This is a really, really capitalist country. And to me it seems there’s a similarity between the way criminals operate and the way everybody else does. I don’t know whether crime is dictating business or business is dictating crime.
CB: Do you feel that the criminal characters in your film are more honest, or at least less hypocritical, about capitalism than legitimate businessmen?
AD: Maybe. Maybe yes and maybe no. A guy like Obama has to persuade people to get what he wants. Obviously a power player in a criminal organization doesn’t have to persuade anyone. He can just do what he wants. So criminals don’t have the same problems that a president might. However, the president—or the government in general—have to engage in marketing in order to persuade people, engage in marketing to sell them on an idea. Obama’s great at singing a song of togetherness, but the American idea of freedom is really just the freedom to compete.
CB: In showing clips of both Bush and Obama, I think you’re one of the few to indicate that perhaps they are two sides of the same coin. As different as people would like to think they are, they represent the same system and are subject to its faults and failings as much as anybody, regardless of all the Hope and Change rhetoric.
AD: To me, regardless of who’s in office, the government is strangled by business. And the government’s priorities are dictated by business. I mean, why does America, even after healthcare reform, still not have free universal healthcare? I’m sure it has something to do with the insurance lobby.
CB: In fact, that’s one of the final lines of the film when Brad Pitt’s Jackie says “America’s not a country, it’s a business.” Was that you speaking through that character?
AD: I suppose so, but it’s only one half of the story. America used to be a fantastical place, you could get everything here. And everything was produced here. In some ways I think it’s more like cronyism than capitalism that’s brought the whole thing down. This is the country where the lightbulb was invented and the movie camera and the telephone, just about every f***ing thing you can imagine was invented in this melting pot. This was a place where so many ideas came together and innovation was encouraged. But it seems like the corporations have a stranglehold on everything now. America’s moved so much of its production and manufacturing offshore, it’s become a nation of middlemen.
Follow Christian Blauvelt on Twitter @Ctblauvelt
[Photo Credit: The Weinstein Company]
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Only six actors have played James Bond, but there are as many opinions about each one as women Bond has slept with over the years. I'm not here to debate who is the best, who is the worst, who wore his tuxedo best, and which one had the nicest thatch of chest hair. (For the record, Lazenby, definitely.) I'm here to tell you about yourself. What does your favorite Bond say about you? Yes, each Bond attracts a type, and based on your selection of which secret agent you would like to guard your secrets, we can learn a lot about you. Find out more about yourself below.
Sean Connery Active Years: 1961-1971 Number of Movies: Six What He Says About You: You fetishize things from the past. It's not only nostalgia for things in your childhood, but you make a big deal about getting artisanal pickles and whiskey with only one giant ice cube. You love Mad Men mostly for the clothes and the furniture, even though you don't understand what is going on. Even though there are newer, better cell phones on the market, you still cling to your RAZR because it makes you feel especially cool. You have been to a farmer's market and carry one of those reusable bags that zips up into a little pouch. You believe in the horoscope. You have taken Viagra non-recreationally. George Lazenby Active Years: 1969 Number of Movies: One What He Says About You: You consider yourself either a non-conformist or an aesthete. If you think you're a non-conformist, you're not really different than anyone else, especially your friends. It's just that you're trying so hard to be different that you come off as wacky. If you are an aesthete, you probably don't have a lot of money, but you have really good taste. If only that were a job onto itself. You own a tuxedo shirt (or a blouse that looks like one) though you don't have many occasions to wear it. In fact, you probably spend too much on clothing. You like your steak medium rare, you are curious about Crossfit, and you unironically hunt for foods with antioxidants. Roger Moore Active Years: 1973-1985 Number of Movies: Seven What He Says About You: You are your nieces' and nephews' favorite uncle, even if they don't get all of your jokes. That's because most of your jokes are pretty lame. You own a lot of graphic T-shirts, many of them with catchphrases popularized by movies or TV shows. Your taste in music is generally s**tty, even though you continue to proselytize for Rush against the rest of the world's admonitions. You enjoy a hobby that is both obscure to the world, but intense for practitioners, like poetry, cabaret, or magic. You like Family Guy and Grace Jones, even though she would hate you for liking Family Guy. Timothy Dalton Active Years: 1987-1989 Number of Movies: Two What He Says About You: You are a ghost. You are figure of the imagination. You are a unicorn, a Tooth Fairy, an upstanding member of the Lohan clan. You do not exist. Pierce Brosnan Active Years: 1998-2002 Number of Movies: Four What He Says About You: You have read and enjoyed Fifty Shades of Grey. The last time you got really, really drunk was when you went to a Neil Diamond concert with your girlfriends and you felt like crap for three days. You told your kids it was the flu, and they were embarrassed of you like they always are. You are an excellent cook and have the best collection of yoga pants of anyone in your neighborhood, even if you don't do yoga as often as you'd like. You drink mostly white wine and you're finally getting over your crush on George Clooney. Daniel Craig Active Years: 2006-Present Number of Movies: Three (so far) What He Says About You: Your high school sweetheart treated you like crap and you've never quite gotten over it. Now the guys you like are all kind of jerks or douchebags, but that makes you like them even more. Yes, that means you are probably gay or a woman, and you hate board shorts and guys who don't tend to their body hair, but you won't call it "manscaping" because you don't want to sound like an idiot. If you're a straight guy (and there is nothing wrong with that) you have been described as a "metrosexual" by the annoying lady in your office. You don't like to cry at movies, though you sometime do and hide it from people. You go to the gym regularly and go commando. You shave your pubic area and you spend way too much money on Apple products. Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan [Photo Credit: United Artists (2), MGM (3), Columbia Pictures] More: Idris Elba as James Bond: The Right Move for 007 James Bond Turns 50: Why the Franchise Should Never End 'Skyfall' Trailer: What James Bond Learned From Harry Potter From Our Partners:New ‘Star Wars VII’: What to Expect (Moviefone) Don’t Fly! Ridiculously Bad Movie Pilots(Moviefone)

For five nights and four days, the San Diego Convention Center will play host to the geekiest and nerdiest and scruffiest looking nerd herders at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con. Fanboys and fangirls, your annual 96 hours of Zen have arrived.
Hollywood.com will be on hand at this year's Con to report on all the big events, but you're friendly neighborhood Couch Potato/fanboy is here to give you the skinny on what to expect over the next few days.
You're welcome. Just bring me back some swag!
Wednesday Night, July 20 - Previews Galore!
No, not free handouts of the Diamond Distributors catalog, but for those getting to the Con early, you can entrench yourself in Ballroom 20 for a three-hour marathon of some of the fall season's hotly anticipated TV shows. And if their not hotly anticipated, they sure will be by the time this night's over.
From 6-9PM, you can catch a plethora of pilots.CW's The Secret Circle - from Kevin Williamson and L.J. Smith (The Vampire Diaries), Fox's Alcatraz, which stars Jurassic Park's Sam Neill, Lost's Jorge Garcia and is produced by J.J. Abrams, and CBS' Person of Interest, which will star another Lost alum, Michael Emerson. Person gets the the extra uber-geeky award, for being both executive produced by Abrams, and being created by Jonathan Nolan (Christopher "Dark Knight" Nolan's brother). Preview night also includes the pilot premiere of the animated Supernatural series, which will debut on DVD and Blu-Ray.
After the pilot marathon, head back to your room, get some rest and put the finishing touches on your costume. You've got four epic feature-length days ahead of you.
Thursday, July 21 - Comic-Con Day 1: They Live!
The main event is here!
For lovers of spies and chins...
If you happened to have camped outside of Ballroom 20 after last night's screenings, then you must really love Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe, because the DVD premiere party will be happening here from 10-11AM. You'll get to hear from the series' creator, Matt Nix, star Jeffrey Donovan, and of course, the man, the myth, the chin himself, Bruce Campbell.
For seekers of the precious...
I know what you're thinking: "I'm not at Comic-Con for a Q&amp;A of the hottest show on USA, I dressed like Gimli for cryin' out loud!" That's why from 10-11AM, you and your battle axe should swing on over to Room 7AB for a Q&amp;A with "Quickbeam," Clifford Broadway and "MrCere," Larry D. Curtis, staff veterans of theOneRing.net for Hobbit Talk to get an unauthorized look at the upcoming Hobbit movies.
For anyone that's ever swung a stick making while making an electric humming noise...
If the story of Bilbo Baggins isn't geeky enough for you, then surely you must want to know about what's going on in a galaxy far, far away. One of the most anticipated XBox 360 Kinect video games in development, is St the Con, so grab your Padawan braids and force push your way to room 32AB for a sneak peek at Star Wars: Kinect where the wizards of LucasArts will be showing off the title's sure-to-be wild, addicting gameplay. Any Star Wars fan worth their weight in Jawas has dreamt of wielding a lightsaber, and now here's your chance. Later in the day at 4:45, in 6BCF will be the a preview of Star Wars: Clone Wars Season 4. If the prequel films have jaded you to the Star Wars Saga and have missed this incredible series, then you should check this preview out and then catch up on what is actually one of the best animated shows on TV.
For Twi-hards, there's really no word to describe your level of fandom...
The books and films that have captivated legions of teenagers the world over (and plenty of adults as well) are heading to the Hallowed Hall H at 11:15AM for a sneak peek at The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1, and for what's sure to be a shriek-inducing Q&amp;A with the filmmakers and members of the cast.
For fans that came actually came for Comic Books...
Did you know that the San Diego Comic-Con is actually a Comic Book Convention?! It's true by golly, and DC is bringing it's big summer event to the Con. Room 6DE at 11:30AM will play host to "DC: Flashpoint," a discussion with the DC Universe's executive editor, Eddie Berganza and some of the talent behind the all but confirmed rumored reboot of the entire DCU. Then help the lovely staff at the Con clean the room up and get an even better seat for a discussion with acclaimed comic book writer, Grant Morrison at 12:45PM. At 3:15PM in 6DE will be a Batman Panel featuring a discussion about the caped crusader's new books and global appeal. 24 hours later in the same room, DC will preview their upcoming Superman books to see how the Man of Tomorrow will fit into the new DCU.
For Scoobies who long for Sarah Michelle Gellar...
When Bridget Martin witnesses a murder, she goes on the run posing as her wealthy twin sister, Siobhan and Comic-Con's Ballroom 20 gets to have a sneak peek at the new CW show called, Ringer, at 1:45PM. Panel to follow with Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar and costars, Ioan Gufford and Nestor Carbonell.
FOX fans need not apply...
The hallowed halls of Hall H have served as jump off points for films like Independence Day, X2, Avatar, and Wolverine. 20th Century Fox returns to Comic-Con to preview their upcoming sure to be hits for 2011 and 2012 at 3:15PM.
For the Targaryens in attendance...
I have to admit, I had never heard of George R.R. Martin's "Song of Fire and Ice" fantasy series before Game of Thrones debuted on HBO, and after a triumphant first season, I am waiting with baited dragon's breath for the second. Martin himself will be moderating the "Game of Thrones Q&amp;A" starring Emilia Clarke (Daenrys Targaryan), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Ser Jamie Lannister), Kit Harrington (Jon Snow), and the Khal himself, Jason Momoa (Drogo). Ballroom 20 at 3PM.
For every member of Batman, Incorporated...
While Warner Bros. is saving some advertising dollars by not bringing The Dark Knight Rises to the Con (and while fans are depressed over this, let's face it, TDKR doesn't need the hype— the film is already hyping itself), the company along with video game developer, Rocksteady is bringing the most anticipated game of 2011 to ComiCon - "Arkham City." Voice actors Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy will be on the panel that is showing off some secrets and gameplay of what is sure to one of the top three games of the year. (5-6PM, no room yet). Then get yourself some dinner and head to Room 8, because at 7:30, "Detecting Deviants in the Dark Knight: Profiling Gotham City's Serial Killers" will be looking at the expansive, intriguing and exciting Batman Rogues Gallery, featuring Forensic Psychiatrists of Broadcast Thought - MDs H. Eric Bender, Praveen R. Kambam, and Vasilis K. Pozios; teaming up with Mark E. Safarik, FBI retired supervisory special agent, Behavioral Analysis Unit. The quartet will be taking a very real look at some of Batman's most dangerous foes and their real world counterparts.
For the Dark Passenger in us all...
If you're a fan of Showtime's Dexter, then you know that the series is one of the best on TV, and the stars of the show, CS Lee, David Zayas, and Dexter himself, Michael C. Hall are headed to Ballroom 20 at 5:30 to partake in "Showtime's Tired of Ordinary Television?" panel to preview the upcoming sixth season of the acclaimed show. Also coming to ComiCon for this event are the stars of Shameless, William H. Macy and Emmy Rossum; and a preview of the networks's newest series, Homeland, from Howard Gordon and Alex Dansa (24), and starring Claire Danes.
Friday, July 22 Day 2 - They Wish to Cure Us, But I Say We Are the Cure....
I knew there'd be some Star Trekkin' going on...
A whole day has gone by at Comic-Con and no hide nor hair of Gene Roddenberry's epic franchise. That's all about to change at 10:15 in 6BCF, where Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) and Captain James Tiberius Kirk himself, William Shatner will be on hand to present the Shat's new EPIX documentary series, in which he traverses the world interviewing he actors that have played Starfleet Captains in a panel moderated by the always geeked out voice of generation X, Kevin Smith!
For everyone siting in Sheldon's spot...
The world of TV invaded Comic-Con again, and this time it's by a bunch of actors playing the very geeks and nerds we happen to be, only way smarter. As "The Big Bang Theory," gears up for it's fifth season, the stars of the show (Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, Mayim Bialik, and Melissa Rauch; along with creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady converge on Ballroom 20 at 12:30 to talk up the new season and the upcoming Fourth Season DVD.
In brightest day, in darkest night...
Bruce Timm has been responsible for bringing the worlds of Superman, Batman, and the Justice League to life in some of the most memorable cartoons ever and now he's bringing his golden touch the emerald knight, The Green Lantern! Timm is bringing footage put together especially for the Con, previewing the upcoming animated series, which centers on Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps' trainer, the lovable Kilowog as they try to fight off a Red Lantern invasion. Most of us will have to wait until 2012 to raise our rings, but you can speak the oath at Comic-Con and get this sneak peek early in room 6BCF.
"Kate, we have to go baaaaaaack!"...
One year later, and uber-Losties, Jeff Jensen and Dan Snierson are still going on about islands, time travel, hatches, and Sawyer insults. At 3:30 in 5AB, the duo behind Entertainment Weekly's "Totally Lost" will tie up loose ends on their whacked out Lost theories and discuss promising new TV obsessions.
Not enough Bats in your belfry yet...
Batman is such a global media franchise, there's more than a few panels dedicated to the Caped Crusader, seemingly one for every angle the character can take! While many of us grew up loving the Dark Knight, there can be only one "Boy Who Loved Batman." Producer Michael Uslan will be in Room 4 at 4PM discussing his lifelong obsession with the World's Greatest Detective and his journey to bring fans the truest representations of the character on film. Maybe even get a taste of The Dark Knight Rises.
Now swinging into Hall H...
Some of us have been waiting impatiently for footage The Amazing Spider-Man movie and at 4PM, Sony Pictures is bringing Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and director Marc Webb to talk about and maybe show some of the July 3, 2012 release. Sadly though, we're gonna have to endure Nicolas Cage as well, as the worlds biggest comic fan and coincidentally, one of its least improved actors, will be at ComiCon as well, pimping his second adventure as the flaming skull of vengeance in Ghost Rider - The Spirit of Vengeance. Also previewing at the Con will be the 30 Minutes or Less, panel starring Aziz Ansari, Nick Swardson, and Michael Pena. Lastly, it's time to start the reactor and stop starting at three-breasted Martian mutants, because the remake of Total Recall and stars Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, and John Cho will all be at ComiCon too.
Because Twilight is just too clothed for you...
The fourth season of True Blood is underway and Sookie's got to deal with fairies, vampires, and werewolves (oh my!). And many of the series' stars are going to have deal with the insatiable appetites of fans at ComiCon in Ballroom 20 at 5:30PM for a q and A with stars Ryan Kwanten (Jason), Sam Trammell (Sam), Rutina Wesley (Tara), Nelson Ellis (LaFayette), along with some others join show creator, Alan Ball and moderator, EW's Tim Stack.
The world premiere DVD you've been waiting for...
Yeah I know we've mentioned Bruce Wayne quite a bit in this ComiCon preview, but the big black bat does have that kind of media dominance. Friday night will culminate the world premiere of Batman: Year One, adapted for the acclaimed best selling Frank Miller mini-series. Ballroom 20 will play host to the movie, as well as then panel featuring voice stars, Ben McKenzie, Eliza Dushku, Katee Sackhoff, executive producer, Bruce Timm.
Check back soon for Part 2!